


One Last Cigarette

by vogue91



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Canonical Character Death, Cigarettes, Introspection, M/M, Memories, POV First Person, Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-23
Updated: 2018-02-23
Packaged: 2019-03-23 02:11:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 836
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13777485
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vogue91/pseuds/vogue91
Summary: Since you haven’t come back home, it has happened often for me to light up cigarettes and let them burn, consuming them, to save that smell.It still bothers me, but the acridity they release tastes of you.





	One Last Cigarette

Three months. Two days.

I don’t know how many hours. You know, I’ve lost my sense of time.

I just know too much has passed, or perhaps too little.

And you’re not here.

The first days have been the worst. I expected to see you coming in from the living room’s door, with that bored face of yours, complaining about segregation as usual.

And I’ve waited for you, for a while. With a book in my hands, massaging my temples, searching the concentration necessary to read, never finding it.

Throwing continuous gazes to that door, which frame has stayed empty. Until I had to give in to the obvious.

You weren’t going to come. Not that day, nor the next one, nor the following. And I had to give up and accept that what I had seen at the Ministry was horribly real.

That you had actually fallen behind that veil, that it wasn’t a trick of my mind. That you had left me alone.

And yet, even though I surrendered, I keep staying here, motionless, waiting for someone that will never come.

I pass a finger distractedly over the cigarette burn on the couch’s upholstery.

 _Silk burns too easily,_ I remember these were your words when you had let the stub fall off your hand.

And I remember I also got mad for your negligence, while now I’m glad for that single burn. It’s a sign of your presence in this house, a sign that you’ve lived here, even hating every second of it.

Silk burns too easily, it’s true. I smile for that useless comment of yours, that now comes violently back to my mind, without leaving me be. I breathe deeply the air, still slightly foul with the smell of smoke.

Since you haven’t come back home, it has happened often for me to light up cigarettes and let them burn, consuming them, to save that smell.

It still bothers me, but the acridity they release tastes of you.

It tastes of your sleepless nights, it tastes of your moments of irritability and of those of melancholy.

It tastes of moments spent together, in the endless nights in this curse house, which nonetheless for a while has been _ours._

I take the package left abandoned on the desk. There’s only one left. I sigh and hesitate, then I turn it on.

I keep it in my hands, watching it as if it had a sort of magic that I can’t completely understand.

I feel an emptiness inside of me, Sirius, an emptiness that burns just life this cigarette.

And I let my mind wander, I close my eyes and I see you, I breathe in the sharp smoke resisting the instinct of coughing and I imagine you keeping it in your hand and smoking it, till the end.

I fight to hold back the tears, because I really can’t cry anymore.

You’d be laughing about me if you were here, I know it.

But _you’re not_ , so in the end what does it matter?

I open my eyes again, staring at the circular, ephemeral traces of smoking spreading through the air.

I’m tired, Sirius.

I’d like to lie down, closing my eyes without knowing I have to open them again, sooner or later.

I dream of getting to bed without wanting to. Like when you were still here, like when I did battle with sleep, because sleeping meant closing my eyes and missing the chance to see you until the next morning.

I dream all of this, I desire it, and I know that none of these cravings of mine will ever be satisfied anymore.

Because you’re not here, Sirius. Death has consumed you, like oxygen is consuming the cigarette in between my fingers.

The last one.

Biting my lip, I bring my hand closer to the upholstery.

_Silk burns too easily._

And I must say you’re right, for once. Not even the time to get the stub close and I already see a tear in the fabric. Next to the one you made, to keep it a little company.

My fingers start to feel the warmth. They burn.

Like the emptiness inside my heart.

I crush it in the ashtray, violently, trying with it to crush the memory of you as well.

I’m tired, Sirius. So damn tired.

We’re out of cigarettes, and now I know you won’t come back.

I’d like to go to bed now, because I still want to do it. Because I’d like to close my eyes over this suffocating emptiness.

I’d love to close my eyes over you. But _you’re not here._

The last cigarette is consumed. And perhaps is a sign I should move on.

My fingers go back brushing the burns on the couch, two of them now.

Because silk burn too easily, Sirius. Just like me.

I close my eyes, I can’t keep them open anymore.

I fall asleep with the taste of you floating in the air, for one last time.

Farewell, Sirius.


End file.
